Amazon product listings that are high-quality make it easy for customers to find and purchase products. If a product listing is considered to be low-quality, Amazon will flag it and suppress it from search results, and therefore kill your chances of getting sales.
Amazon Product Listings Basics
Luckily, creating product listings that are top quality isn’t that difficult if you know what to aim for. There are 6 elements that will help create product listings that rank higher and help drive more sales: a product title that is descriptive, images that are captivating, clear and concise bullet points, a detailed product description, and competitive pricing. If you combine these elements with a little keyword research, your product listings have a much better chance of getting sales.
Product Listing Keyword Research
If you need help doing keyword research, check out Keyword.io or Scientific Seller’s keyword research tool. Both are completely free tools you find use to gather keywords relevant to your product listings.
Once you’ve narrowed down the keywords you want to target in your product listings, you’re all set to start creating each element for each of your product listings.
1. A Product Title that is Descriptive
Product listing titles can be up to 250 characters long and Amazon recommends that sellers follow this formula when writing titles for you product listings:
Product Brand/Description + Line/Collection + Material/Ingredient + Color/Size + Quantity
Not all product listing will need to include all of those factors, but it is good guide to start compiling a quality title. Here are some examples of what would be considered high-quality, descriptive product listing titles:
Pillow Perfect Indoor/Outdoor Summer Breeze Wicker Seat Cushion, Flame, Set of 2 (character count (no spaces): 69)
GoldeaDream Silver Plated Crystal Rhinestone Bracelets 6.7″ with Extender Chain (character count (no spaces): 70)
Babyganics Mineral-Based Baby Sunscreen Spray, SPF 50, 6oz Spray Bottle (Pack of 2) (character count (no spaces): 71)
You’ll notice each of these examples only have around 70 characters. Even though you are allowed up to 250 characters, don’t stuff keywords in the title that don’t make sense. Keep it descriptive, but relevant and easy to understand.
2. Captivating Images for your Product Listings
There are very strict guidelines you must follow for images on your product listings. Your product listings will be penalized by Amazon, including negatively impacting your search rankings or having your product listings suppressed, if the guidelines are not met. However, with that being said, the guidelines are not difficult to follow.
You don’t have to spend a lot of time or money to get professional looking images for your product listings. With the advancement of smartphone cameras, it’s possible to use just your cell phone to snap your product images. Images must accurately depict the product being sold and should not be pixelized or blurry.
Even though it isn’t always possible, it’s highly recommended by Amazon that images have a white background, especially for the product listing main image. If your main product listing image does not have a white background, it might be shown farther down on the search results page. If you can’t shoot on a white background or remove a background yourself with a photo editing software, you can find inexpensive freelancer on Fiverr who can remove the background for you.
Secondary images are important for showing details, angle views, and important features of the product. These images can help customers visualize the product and better understand what it is, how it functions, what it looks like, etc. You can use images showing the product in use, zooming in on the finer details. Customers will hopefully be enticed to buy your product by seeing all aspects of the product.
The minimum image size for product listing images is 1000 x 500 pixels. Images of this size will trigger the zoom feature on Amazon, which gives customers a closer look. The subject matter of your image must fill up 85% of the image area, so backgrounds should be trimmed out.
This product listing image gives you an idea of things to avoid: the image does not have an all-white background, it is pixelized and blurry, the product could take up more space in the image to show more detail, and there is a random plus sign on the side of the image that probably shouldn’t be there.
This is a good example of a main product listing image. The product fills the image space, is clear and shows the details of the product, and has an all-white background.
Poor Quality Product Listing Image
Good Quality Product Listing Image
3. Clear and Concise Bullet Points
Each of your Amazon product listings should have a bulleted list of product details which is referred to as the Key Product Features. Within the product info page, you can enter each bullet point in the Key Product Features text box under the ‘Description’ tab.
Each field can contain up to 100 characters and should highlight the important information about the product. This is a key place to capitalize on your keyword research, while still providing information in a meaningful way. You may enter up to 5 lines, so make each one count. Once you’ve completed this list, it will show up on your product listings as a bulleted list under the title and pricing information.
Here are some ideas of what to include in this list:
Product name, use, or intent
Sizing, dimensions, or fit details
Special feature or benefits
Materials, colors, contents, or ingredients
Guarantees, warranties, etc.
Things you should not include:
Promotional language, coupons, or deals
Pricing information
Free shipping offers
4. Detailed Product Description
A detailed product description is the key to creating high-quality product listings. This is the place where you should describe the product fully, answer any questions customers might have, and provide all the information customers need in order to decide to buy your product. The Product Description field is underneath the Key Product Features on the Product Info page.
You’re allowed to enter up to 2000 characters in the Product Description field. You can even enter basic HTML codes to help break up long paragraphs, create more bulleted lists, or add bold headers. If you’re not familiar with basic HTML, you can use a tool like HTML Online.
This is where you should be painting a picture of how your product is exactly what your customer is looking for. Discuss the benefits they’ll enjoy by buying your product. And don’t forget to add as many of those keywords you found in your research as possible, while still making it natural-sounding, conversational, and easy to understand. You want to make your product stand out and this is the place to make it happen!
5. Competitive Pricing
While there is a lot to be said about competitive pricing, there is one rule that outweighs all others in most cases:
The Selling Price + Any Shipping Fees
There are many different ways to accomplish competitive pricing. Most sellers find success by trying to be the combined low price leaders, no matter how they present the selling price or shipping. Some may list all their products as “ships for free” but inflate the product price to cover the shipping costs. Others keep product prices low, but raise their shipping rates. And, of course, there are those who use Amazon FBA, so their products ship for free under Amazon Prime.
There are no right and wrong ways, so you have to decide what is best for your business by doing research and testing. It’s important to note that the combined lower-priced product listings often show higher in search results, even if the seller is brand new and has no ratings or reviews yet. This is why it is vital to do your research when deciding on products to sell. Know the competition in the category or categories you want to sell in, and look at the specific product(s) you want to sell to see what the pricing is like among those selling the same product(s).
6. Word Choice and Grammar
You certainly don’t have to have an English degree to have well-written Amazon product listings. Using proper word choice and grammar in your product listings is important because you want to make it as easy as possible for customers to understand the features and benefits of your products. While you want to insert keywords as often as you can, you don’t want to get too overzealous and make it obvious or impact the customer’s ability to read the listing easily. It’s best to identify your top keywords prior to writing your listing and then keep them in mind and insert them into sentences or lists where it feels natural.
There are many free tools, some of which you may already have, that you can use to double check for spelling and grammatical errors. For example, you can use Microsoft Word or other word processors to check your product listings for errors. You can also find plug-ins for your web browser like Grammarly that will suggest edits right on websites you are typing in. Whether you are a native English speaker or not, it’s always best to have someone proofread your writing to make sure it’s written so someone else can understand it. Of course you know your product well, but you want to make sure customers will understand what makes it so great, too.
By doing a little bit of keyword research, and taking some time to optimize your product listings, you’re much more likely to get them displayed in search results and get customers to buy your products. You want to make it as easy and painless as possible for customers to decide to buy your products, and having high-quality product listings is the key to making that happen.
Check out our other blogs for more great information on how to grow your Amazon selling business!
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